Friday, July 3, 2015

Why I Refuse to Baby-Proof the House

Baby Proofing. Child Proofing. It's all the same thing. Essentially you're trying to prevent your child from getting hurt. Or in some cases, you're trying to prevent your child from taking down hundreds of DVD's. The things to baby proof your home are pretty much in every store, including dollar stores. So obviously there's people that go for this crap. Based on the title of this post, I am not one of those people.

Josh and I did not spend hundreds of dollars on baby proofing equipment. Things we were gifted at the baby showers were not used. We just didn't feel like it was really needed. At first it was just kind of an unspoken thing for us. I talked to Josh a little before posting this to try and figure out if we had a reason or not. Apparently we did, it was just always unspoken for us.

I want to be able to get into my cabinets and refrigerator.
Y'all. Those things that go on kitchen cabinets, drawers, and the fridge to keep the kid out. I hate them. Despise them. Sure, some aren't that hard to open. That's not that the point. They're preventing me from being able to zip around the kitchen like a tornado and cook something! Also, pots and pans... while loud... prove to be excellent baby toys. When I was a new mom having to cook and take care of the baby; it was safer to let the babies sit on the floor and play with pots rather than getting held and burnt by hot grease. If the cabinets are locked, how can they get to their drums??

I despise door knob things.
O.K. Yes, I have children that have almost a three year age gap. So my oldest knows how to open doors with any kind of knob. Ainsley has yet to figure out knobs and can open the handles. However, by the time our kids have been able to open knobs or handles or anything, they've also been old enough to understand, "the door is closed for a reason... don't go in there". Plain and simple. I don't want to make my children feel like they're locked into a room, or locked out of one. They have learned to knock on doors to get in. I don't lock them in their rooms for punishment. They are pointless.

The door knob things kind of inspired this post. Zander was at a friend's house last week. This friend has door knob things on the bedroom doors to keep the children in the room at night. Well, the bedroom door got closed while Zander was there and he couldn't get out to use the restroom. As a result he had a full blown panic attack. He didn't know how to get around the child proof knob. If we had them in the home maybe he would've eventually figured it out by this age, but we've never needed them.

Our DVDs are in the open.
This has proven to be a problem with Ainsley. She is more rebellious than Zander is, and she has been more curious about the DVD's. As a result of her curiosity, she's been the one to take the movies off of the shelves. With her it's taken a bit more "no, don't touch Ainsley" and redirecting. But that's been the key. In my opinion, kids are going to be more prone to find something that's hidden to see what it is. If something is out in the open as part of their normal day to day life, they'll be more likely to leave it alone. I promise as soon as I packed away DVD's or xbox games Zander and Ainsley both started to try to figure out what they were.

So what am I really trying to say??
I guess, I didn't want to be inconvenienced in my regular daily life. As bad as that sounds, hear me out. I knew baby(ies) would change our lives. I knew we'd give up a lot for them, and we have. But I didn't want to give up the way we stored things, or lived in the home just because of the baby. I feel like in not changing anything in the home to create any bubbles, it helped teach the kids.
The kids learned to listen (don't touch. that's hot. corners hurt).
I guess deep down I wanted my kids to feel like the house was theirs too. Which it is. Somehow I got it stuck in my mind that if we changed how we kept the house then the kids wouldn't feel at home. Silly yes. But it's our home. And the book shelves don't get emptied during the day.

Now, please keep in mind... I'm not in any way shaming any of my readers if you baby proof. Seriously. To each their own. It just was not right for Josh and I. I would love to hear your thoughts though. Do you/ did you child proof? Did it help? Will you child proof with future kids?

All we did was put a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs (mostly to keep her out of our tools upstairs) and cover the sockets...but that's it in terms of "child-proofing". We do store our medicines and cleaning supplies out of reach, though. I think some of the things they sell are crazy.

It's supposed to keep kids from opening doors you don't want them to. It's essentially locking the door but not really cause the door can still be open just with pinching the sides of the plastic thing. It's dumb.

I guess the only baby proofing that makes sense to me is the kind that prevent dangerous accidents -- like keeping the bleach locked up, outlet covers, baby gates, stuff like that. But screw those doorknob things. I can't even open them.

This makes so much sense. I didn't even know those doorknob things existed. The extent of my babyproofing will probably be just putting the candle lighter thingy, scissors and other actual dangerous things up higher and out of reach.

Exactly!! Like keep the kids safe enough to where they don't want the chemicals. We didn't even use the outlet covers though. Like looking around the house we didn't buy anything baby proof related from the store.